‘I can’t believe it’s over,’ Eva sighed, fastening her seat belt. ‘It was a brilliant holiday.’

‘I’m so glad you persuaded me to come,’ Keelin smiled at her friend. She was sitting in the window seat of the Aer Lingus jet that would fly them home. Norah was in the aisle seat, rooting for her Jackie Collins novel.

‘I bet Christos was too,’ she said sotto voce, and the other two laughed. Norah, sadly, was returning home virgo intacta, having not been able to summon up the courage to go the whole way with Stavros.

Keelin sighed deeply. She wasn’t looking forward to returning to Ireland. She’d enjoyed so much about the holiday: her delightful interludes with her soldier, the laid-back culture, the heat, the food, the friendly islanders. The very foreignness of the place had been intoxicating. This was probably how Brigid felt about Africa.

What would her aunt think of her loose morals, sleeping with a stranger on holiday? She might not be too impressed, Keelin reflected. And would she think Keelin immodest for dressing in shorts and wearing no bra under her halter-neck top? What was so awful about the female body that it needed to be kept hidden, as if it were something tainted? Her legs had a sexy, even tan after her holiday. They look great and I’m proud of them, Keelin thought as the plane roared into the sky, wishing she’d the nerve to prance around the college grounds in her shorts and halter neck.

Her holiday had been a turning point. She’d left Ireland a girl; she was returning home a woman. It was time to change her attitudes about how women should be in the world, she reflected as the passengers settled down for the long flight home.

*

‘Teacher, Teacher, she pulled my hair!’

‘Did not!’

‘Did so!’

Keelin held up a warning finger to the two warring five-year-olds who were glowering at each other in the straggly line that was forming at the classroom door, waiting for the bell to ring.

‘What did I say about fighting, Sheila Kelly and Cathy O’Flanagan? Down to the end of the line with you.’

‘But, Teacher, I did nuttin,’ came the outraged howl from Cathy O’Flanagan.

It was Friday afternoon. Keelin had a thumping headache from being in a stuffy classroom all day, on top of a hangover from the previous night’s carousing, in Zhivago. She couldn’t wait to see the back of her infants’ class and go home to bed for a couple of hours, before hitting Leeson Street with the girls. The bell rang, saving her from having to hold an inquiry about the hair-pulling incident as a crescendo of excited chatter swept through the line and her charges waited for her to lead them out the classroom door to the school entrance, where their parents were waiting.